How do I block access to my forum from VPNs, Proxies, Tor, and Web Servers,

[nathanielrsuchy]

Hi there,

Recently my forum has had issues with a very persistent user who was trolling the forums. After our team caught on the offending posts were removed and the account was closed. The user has then proceeded to create new accounts from various VPNs, Proxies, Tor, and even tunneled his registrations through web servers. Currently the strategy has been to ban the ASNs one by one. Obviously this is very time consuming for the server administration team. Is there a better way to block this type of traffic?

 

[Streller]

I'm sorry that you are having to deal with someone that thinks trolling is a good way to spend their time. Well, obviously it is a good way to spend their time in their eyes because they seem to be spending a lot of their time dedicated to trolling your forum. I am afraid that this kind of trolling is not really easy to prevent; if preventable at all. You can try your best to block VPN traffic by blocking some of the VPN servers from the more popular providers, but there are thousands of services that can be used.

I really hate to break it to you, but the chances are, you're just going to have to keep on banning every account that he/she makes. They may or may not eventually get bored.

 

[Allenafaith]

From what I know, you can't block VPN/proxy connections as I've had this issue on my forum as well. You can block the public IP or find a list of all the popular VPN/proxy IPs and block them all yourself.

 

[mav3n]

The issue is that VPNs and proxies tunnel through so many IP blocks that it will be hard to track down a particular IP to block, even with IP wildcards- which using those is sketchy anyways. It's just an everlasting cat-and-mouse game. Your host might be able to edit an ACL to deny traffic from a block of IPs, but I don't know.

 

[John]

In all honesty, I don't think blocking them will help at all. You'd need a plugin for your software to create much damage in where they can come from; although, that probably won't do much in the way of keeping trolls off of your forum.

 

[katzer]

Once you get a baddy its really hard to stop him/her.

 

[nathanielrsuchy]

I decided to block ASNs through CloudFlare. It doesnt require configuration files with 1000s of lines of code. It's working so far. The main ASNS used by the troll were Amazon Web Services and Digital Ocean so I was able to block off those networks.

 

[Cosmic]

You may be able to hinder him/her a little bit, but it's nearly impossible to block all proxies. A lot of non-malicious users have proxies as well. I'm using an SSLVPN right now, actually. I don't really want the admin of any forum I sign up to to know my real IP address. 😛

 

[nathanielrsuchy]

You may be able to hinder him/her a little bit, but it's nearly impossible to block all proxies. A lot of non-malicious users have proxies as well. I'm using an SSLVPN right now, actually. I don't really want the admin of any forum I sign up to to know my real IP address. 😛

I'd had success with blocking the ASNs through CloudFlare. The anonymity of IP Addresses allows users to keep creating more and more accounts to troll from. I was able to block a ton of providers and haven't had many issues since. I guess my current method will be to continue blocking ASNs as issues occur.

 

[Arch]

Cloudflare I think can deny some proxy connections. Its also free which is good

 

[Shannon Apple]

To be honest, the only way to get rid of someone like this is to back trace them, and report them via the servers that they are using. I've had to do this once on another site I was running. I got a guy banned from his VPN service for doing stuff like that. He even said that he was responsible for a porn link that was hacked onto the forum's front page, so I told them that the site he was targeting was a PG13 anime forum with a lot of school children logging in. They banned him and told me that while they couldn't give me personal info on him, they'd keep his info on file in case I wanted to press legal charges. Too bad, I already knew his real name and so on. It really isn't that hard to find out that information with the right know how... and no hacking involved, just using info available online.

He was also making veiled threats about coming to Ireland because he thought that would scare me. I was icked, not scared, but we were going to report him to "internet crimes" for real. He said he was doing it because he thought I was an admin with no tech know how and easily frightened. Muppet! Bound him to rights. He backed off. I did have the help of someone else in scaring him off. It depends on how bad the attacks on your site are, but you CAN do something about it if they are bad enough. The internet isn't as anonymous as people think, and you don't need to do any hacking to find out who people are. Just a bit of time.

I dunno, it might even be worth letting this person make an account and put them on global ignore. This way they can post all they want, but no one can actually see it. Just an idea. When no one is responding, they get tired and leave. If he makes another account, do the same to that one.